


Books and letters

by Rogercat



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: AU, Cousins, F/M, Family, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Growing Up, Loneliness, Long-Distance Relationship, Loyalty, Maeglin week, Middle Earth, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Valinor, attempted pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 23:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13154697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogercat/pseuds/Rogercat
Summary: AU in which Aredhel and Eöl moves to Fingolfin at her pregnancy, and Maeglin grows up in a very different family





	Books and letters

Eöl smiled at the finished jewelry he just had created for Aredhel. Her begetting day was in two months and he wanted to have her gift finished in good time before that. Carefully placing the silver necklace in a small box he kept hidden in a small locker, he then laid some ash over the coal so the forge would keep warm until morning.             

 

The royal family bedrooms were on the second floor in the main building of Barad Eithel, and just as Eöl passed by where Maeglin had his room, he thought that he heard something from inside.

 

“Maeglin? Why are you not asleep?”

 

He was greeted by the sight of his young son sitting up in bed, clinging to his stuffed rabbit for dear life, with shining éyes as if he was about to start crying.

 

“Globlin...under the bed…”

 

“Ah, I see why that would keep you up.”

 

Maeglin was just a few months after having his 12th begetting day, so it was no wonder that he still could think that a strange noise under the bed was caused by a possible enemy.

 

“Get up. If I need to lift the bed a bit you are gonna add some weight on that.”

 

It did not take long before Eöl found the reason to his son's distress; a rat, which had tried to find some food under his bed.

 

“Let's give this to the kitchen cats. And maybe some warm milk can help fall asleep after this,” he suggested, which seemed to cheer up Maeglin a bit.

  


As they was on the way down to the kitchen, Maeglin spotted a faint light coming from under the door to the chamber where his grandfather Fingolfin slept.

 

“Ada, Haru is still up.”

“No, we are not going to disturb him. If the High King can not sleep, it is his problem to fix....”

 

Naturally, Maeglin did not listen. Instead he glided along his father's tall body down to the floor and quickly walked over like shadow to the door, knocking first as he had been taught to do.

 

“Yes?” a tired voice asked from the inside, and Maeglin took it to be a invitation.

 

“Grandfather?”

 

Fingolfin was sitting in a comfortable chair at the fire, a open book with a quill and inkwell at the small table on his left.

 

“Maeglin, should you not be asleep by this point?”

 

“He was kept awake by this little pest under his bed,” Eöl responded, making Maeglin look up at his father behind him for a moment, as he held up the dead rat which he had taken the opportunity to stab while Maeglin had been distracted by that Fingolfin was still up. The High King made a mild facepalm in a manner which told that he knew perfectly well how it was with a child not being able to sleep after bedtime.

 

“Then, if you can not sleep, Maeglin, perhaps you can help me with this? I am trying to tell your grandmother that Turgon still refuses to hold contact.”

 

The book was one of the few surviving items Fingolfin had managed to bring over the Grinding Ice. In fact, it held a special meaning for him, as he and Anairë had used the book as part of their courtship, each one writing something on a page and a response on the following one. It was still many unused pages which was blank, so when Maeglin climbed up in his grandfather's lap, he could see what Fingolfin had tried to write and crossed over. Taking the quill, the 12-year-old started to write in big, childish letters:

 

_Dear grandmother, today Ada caught a rat which had hid itself under my bed…_

 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

 

Silence.

 

No face showing itself in the Palantír, only the white mist.

 

If anything, Fingolfin honestly looked like he was about to actually start crying in grief, as he reached for a parchment and, despite his shaking hands, managed to draw a thick black line across the names of Turgon and Idril. In two single strokes, the High King had disowned them from the line of succession to the Kingship of the Exiled Noldor.

 

“I can not trust my second-born to follow my commands if he shuts himself off from me. We have barely talked since he left to bring his followers to Gondolin and given that Aredhel refuses to show the way thanks to him being a fool in sealing her off from her love of freedom…” he confessed in a bitter voice to his gathered family members.

 

Fingolfin had requested Aredhel to follow Turgon if his hidden city was as protected as he had claimed, pleading with his only daughter that  he already was unable to forgive himself for his youngest son Argon dying in battle so soon after arriving to Middle-Earth and that her death would break him, only for Aredhel to find out that Turgon had taken his role of protective older brother a bit too seriously. He even had tried to set her up for a secret, arranged marriage to one of the Lords of Gondolin just to keep her bound to Gondolin and Aredhel had escaped from her escorts on the claimed visit to Fingon in order to flee from a such fate.

 

“And that is why I insisted on taking Aredhel to you instead of the hidden city when we realized that we was going to be parents to Maeglin. Had we gone there, I doubt that we never would have gotten a change to leave again. And do not get me started on my own family...” Eöl muttered under his breath in disapproval. He had a very bad relationship to his own father, who still lived in Doriath to this day. Part of the bad blood between father and son had its seed from how the Sindar Elf had treated Eöl's Avari mother, who logically had ranked over him as a female chieftain at the time of their first meeting and which had seemed to aggravate their already conflicting relationship. In fact, Eöl was not even sure how they had managed to stay together long enough to beget him, he only remembered that his mother had struggled as a single mother to raise him and how his sire had refused to recognize him.

 

Sensing the anger in the depths of his mind, Aredhel laid a hand on his shoulder to calm Eöl down from the bitter memories.

 

“Sorry that we were unable to warn you ahead of that my brother might bring up unpleasant memories with his behaviour despite the two of you never meeting in person, before you married my sister,” apologized Fingon in unease, secretly hoping that Turgon would remain in Gondolin and not bring troubles along. Eöl snorted.

 

“If he's anything like my bastard of a father, he better get ready to run from any weapons I may toss at him if he pushes me too far.”

 

Maeglin, who was in his mid-forties and had been quiet until now, looked up from the old book, where he just had written down his view on the disownment of Turgon's line for Anairë in it:

 

“Does any of you add a comment about this too? She may hear it from everyone, not just one version.”

 

No one was surprised by Eöl basically writing down “ _Lady mother of my wife, your second son is a dimwit._ ” in Sindarin since he had not really masted the exact spelling of the Tengwar which the Noldor used to write with, being more used to the Cirth rune writing system which the Dwarves used. Or that Aredhel quickly translated his comment in Tengwar below the Cirth runes with a short mention that Turgon's behaviour had reawakened bad memories of his own father.  

 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

 

_Dear grandmother, tomorrow Ada Fingon, uncle Eöl and aunt Aredhel is gonna leave the Havens because they are going to join the House of Fëanor in battle against the Dark Lord…_

 

Gil-galad paused, unsure what to tell more in the writing.

 

_I am sad that they will leave, but cousin Maeglin and Nana Rilel is gonna stay with me and Cirdan here in the Havens. With warm greetings from your second grandson, Ereinion Gil-galad_

 

Yes, that sounded good. And it was finished just in time as Maeglin entered the chamber. Even with a age difference on 130 years between the two cousins, with Gil-galad having his begetting day in the late summer as contrast the th late winter time of Maeglin's birth-time, they were still good friends.

 

“Ready to see them ride off?”

 

“I do not know…” Gil-galad admitted in a low voice, as Maeglin picked him up in his arms.

They talked a little over how things likely was to be while their parents were going be away in war, even with Rilel staying behind as regent for the Noldor on Fingon's request. To everyone's and his own very big surprise, Maeglin had been named as co-regent for the underage Gil-galad alongside Rilel by Fingon in a royal decree, should he not return from this battle. It was not that Fingon distrusted Aredhel and Eöl in a such task, it was simply a more natural way for Maeglin to train on the role of High King if something happened to Gil-galad and he ended up as the last one of Fingolfin's royal line.     

 

“Do you think I can give Ada Fingon my own luck charm to wear in battle? That little sea shell? To protect him?”

 

“Should not harm…?!”

 

Suddenly Maeglin stopped walking, a look of slight shock and dread on his face. It was lucky that Gil-galad was looking at him, confused over his cousin's sudden change, or things may have been slightly embarrassing to explain:

 

Eöl and Aredhel was half undressed, kissing each other with a such hunger that Maeglin wondered why they were not doing this in their bed chamber instead of risking to be seen by anyone. And it became slightly worse when he had to cover Gil-galad's ears at hearing Eöl say in a heated whisper:

 

“If it is a girl we manages to beget this time, I would prefer her father-name to be Laineth, Free One.”

 

“Bet that you do want her to have a mother-name that is Apairiel, Daughter of Victory, huh?” Aredhel teased him between panting heavy.

“You know perfectly well that I have trouble with pronounce some of the longer names in your family, woman.”

 

Hearing enough and realizing what they planned to do, Marglin hurried away so he would not have to give Gil-galad a child-friendly version of **_that_ ** _Talk_ at this young age. Sure, he had mentioned at times to his parents that he would like to have a sibling. but he was not too sure if this was the right time to make Aredhel pregnant with a second child, before they were to fight in a battle!  

  


Neither Fingon, Aredhel or Eöl returned alive from the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

 

The War of Wrath was finally over, after 42 long years of battle against Morgoth. The Host of the Valar, together with the remaining Elves, Men and Dwarves, had been victorious against the Dark Lord. But to horrible prices of slain people and a world which had changed.

 

“The power of the Valar and Maiar is indeed not to play with…” Maeglin whispered in a mix of awe and grief as  most of the land west of the Ered Luin, as well as a large part of the central part of the mountains, was laid waste and soon after sank beneath the waves.

 

“Maeglin?”

 

Rilel came up to stand beside him on the lower deck of the ship. At the moment, the ship was sailing towards Harlindon, a green and fair elvish land on the northwestern shores of Middle-earth.

 

“Have you been thinking of what I suggested after the last battle? That one of your should sail to Valinor? I might be Fingon's wife and widow, but I have never meet lady Anairë at all and I also doubt that she may even know of her eldest son marrying unless lord Fingoldin have managed to tell her somehow from the Halls Or that lord Finrod have managed to tell her when he was reborn, as lord Finarfin told us. Eärendil and Elwing was not so familiar with our family tree either, so it is unlikely that she would have learnt it from them.”

 

Maeglin could understand his widowed aunt's worries, Gil-galad may be of age now but he was still young. And as the current High King, the surviving Noldor Elves needed him as a leader. If anything, Gil-galad had been shaped by a life-time of war despite his young age, and Maeglin honestly could not imagine his younger cousin enjoy the war-free life in Valinor. Maeglin, who had been born during the more peaceful times of the Long Peace under the Siege of Angband, knew the difference better.

 

“I will go to Valinor with lord Finarfin when they sails back. I may not be someone my grandmother wish to return, but I am sure that she will be happy to finally meet one of her younger grandchildren after already losing the chance to be part of our lives here in Middle-Earth.”

 

Rilel said nothing, but hugged him tightly to let Maeglin know that he would be greatly missed by her and Gil-galad.

 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

 

Anairë stepped back to see how the newly finished family image looked like on the wall. Even after all those years, she kept painting her family members in a silent defiance against those ignorant people who insisted on that she should cast away any hope of them ever coming back, have the Valar annulling her marriage to Fingolfin and remarry to someone else who had remained in Valinor.

 

“There is no way I will do that. I chose Ñolofinwë freely that time, so long ago in our shared youth, to love and marry him. I am the mother of his four children, and no one can ever replace any of them.”

 

A maid knocked on the door to her chamber.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Mylady, there is someone at the front door. From the dialect he speaks Quenya with, he is someone who arrived from Middle-Earth with the High King only a few days ago to Tirion. He requests to see you, saying that he have information about your family…”

 

Anairë did not waste any time then. For all the information as Finrod had given her when he had been reborn, she had long wished to hear some actual news.

  


The young Elf at the front door was, without a mistake, someone of the House of Finwë. Many said that his descendants shared a special aura, despite which one of his three sons they had their lineage from. And this youngster, despite his black eyes and skin-tone too deep to be merely a sun-tan, looked very alike Ñolofinwë in his youth, only more hardened by war and suffering. That he had her beloved Írissë's favorite necklace in the shape of a small silver bow, and held a very familiar if much more worn book in his arms, told enough clues to which one of her two unknown grandsons he must be.

 

“ _Haruni_ …” Maeglin tried to say without pronounce the word wrong, simply because it was so unfamiliar to say. He had been taught both Quenya and Sindarin during his life, yet Quenya had almost became a language for ceremonies and prayers. Anairë silenced him with a surprising strong hug for a lady who would have looked petite and delicate beside her very tall, powerful husband if she had followed him and their children until Exile. Yet as he dropped the old book to the ground from the sudden hug, Maeglin was somehow able to sense what once had drawn his maternal grandparents into love; that Anairë held a steady ground of love and loyalty, inherited by her four children to various degrees.

 

“Welcome home, _súyon_ ,” she whispered between her tears. Allowing himself to cry as well, Maeglin returned the hug.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: According to the references about elven families from the silmarillion writers guild, súyon is a Quenya word for son of one's daughter while Haruni and Haru is Quenya for grandmother and grandfather


End file.
